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Rights groups in push for Snowden pardon
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AMNESTY International, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union launched a campaign on Wednesday to push US President Barack Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, the fugitive intelligence whistleblower living in Russia.
High-profile lawyers and celebrities, including writer Joyce Carol Oates and actor Martin Sheen, have already signed the campaign’s main prod, a petition at pardonsnowden.org that urges Obama to grant Snowden clemency before the president leaves office in January.
But the White House said it had no intention of pardoning Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency who released thousands of classified documents in 2013 revealing the vast US surveillance put in place after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest disputed that Snowden was a whistleblower and said he would enjoy legal due process at a trial in the United States, where he faces up to 30 years in prison for espionage and theft of state secrets.
“His conduct put American lives at risk and it risked American national security. And that’s why the policy of the Obama administration is that Mr Snowden should return to the United States and face the very serious charges that he’s facing,” Earnest told reporters.
In July, the White House rejected an earlier petition to pardon Snowden that had garnered over 160,000 signatures.
The 33-year-old fled with documents to China’s Hong Kong, where he hid among Sri Lankan refugees in cramped tenements, and later received political asylum in Russia after the US revoked his passport while he was en route to Ecuador.
Anthony Romero, ACLU executive director, said despite the White House’s “not very positive reaction” initially, “we think it will change with the public’s response” to the campaign.
Snowden and his backers argue that although he stole data, the leaks benefited the public as they led to improved privacy protection laws.
In a video conference, Snowden reiterated that he could not receive a fair trial in the US under the Espionage Act. “It does not permit a whistleblower defense,” he said. “The law does not distinguish between those who give free sensitive information to journalists and spies who sell it to foreign powers.”
The rights groups launched the campaign on the heels of a release of a biopic thriller, “Snowden,” by anti-establishment director Oliver Stone.
“We hope that Mr. Obama has a stroke of lightning and he sees the way,” Stone said last week.
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